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‘Especially in this nation, I believe you required me. You didn’t realise it but you required me, to alleviate some of your own embarrassment.” The comedian, the forty-two-year-old Canadian comic who has been based in the UK for almost 20 years, brought along her recently born fourth child. Ryan whips off her breast pumps so they don’t make an distracting sound. The first thing you see is the remarkable capacity of this woman, who can fully beam maternal love while forming logical sentences in complete phrases, and without getting distracted.

The second thing you notice is what she’s known for – a authentic, unapologetic audacity, a refusal of affectation and duplicity. When she emerged in the UK stand-up scene in 2008, her provocation was that she was strikingly attractive and refused to act not to know it. “Attempting stylish or beautiful was seen as man-pleasing,” she states of the that period, “which was the reverse of what a funny person would do. It was a trend to be humble. If you appeared in a elegant attire with your underwear and heels, like, ‘I think I’m fabulous,’ that would be seen as really off-putting, but I did it because that’s what I enjoyed.”

Then there was her material, which she summarises simply: “Women, especially, craved someone to appear and be like: ‘Hey, that’s OK. You can be a feminist and have a cosmetic surgery and have been a bit of a party-goer for a while. You can be flawed as a mother, as a significant other and as a picker of men. You can be someone who is afraid of men, but is bold enough to slag them off; you don’t have to be pleasant to them the whole time.’”

‘If you performed in your little push-up bra and heels, that would be seen as really alienating’

The drumbeat to that is an emphasis on what’s authentic: if you have your infant with you, you most likely have your feeding equipment; if you have the profile of a youth, you’ve most likely undergone procedures; if you want to slim down, well, there are medications for that. “I’m not on any yet, but I’ll consider them when I’ve stopped nursing,” she says. It gets to the heart of how women's liberation is understood, which it strikes me has stayed the same in the past 50 years: freedom means appearing beautiful but never thinking about it; being universally desired, but without pursuing the male gaze; having an impermeable sense of self which perish the thought you would ever alter cosmetically; and coupled with all that, women, especially, are expected to never think about money but nevertheless succeed under the relentlessness of current financial conditions. All of which is kept afloat by the majority of us pretending, most of the time.

“For a long time people went: ‘What? She just discusses things?’ But I’m not trying to be controversial all the time. My life events, actions and errors, they reside in this realm between pride and shame. It occurred, I discuss it, and maybe relief comes out of the jokes. I love sharing secrets; I want people to share with me their secrets. I want to know missteps people have made. I don’t know why I’m so keen for it, but I sense it like a bond.”

Ryan was raised in Sarnia, Ontario, a place that was not particularly prosperous or cosmopolitan and had a lively community theater musicals scene. Her dad owned an technical company, her mother was in IT, and they expected a lot of her because she was vivacious, a perfectionist. She dreamed of leaving from the age of about seven. “It was the type of place where people are very content to live next door to their parents and remain there for a lifetime and have their friends' children. When I return now, all these kids look really familiar to me, because I was raised with both their parents.” But isn't it true she partnered with her own teenage boyfriend? She returned to Sarnia, reconnected with her former partner, who she went out with as a teenager, and now – six years later – they have three children together, plus Violet, now 16, who Ryan had raised until then as a lone parent. “Right,” says Ryan. “Sometimes I think there’s a different path where I haven’t done that, and it’s still just Violet and me, stylish, worldly, mobile. But we can’t fully escape where we started, it appears.”

‘We can’t fully escape where we originated’

She did escape for a bit, aged 18, and moved to Toronto, which she enjoyed. These were the time at the restaurant, which has been an additional point of discussion, not just that she worked – and enjoyed working – in a establishment (except this is a misconception: “You would be fired for being undressed; you’re not allowed to remove your top”), but also for a bit in one of her sets where she mentioned giving a manager a blowjob in return for being allowed to go home early. It crossed so many boundaries – what even was that? Abuse? Transaction? Unethical action? Lack of solidarity (towards whoever it was who had to stay late so she could leave early)? Whatever it was, you definitely were not meant to joke about it.

Ryan was amazed that her story caused anger – she got on with the guy! She also wanted to go home early. But it exposed something wider: a deliberate absolutism around sex, a sense that the cost of the #MeToo movement was performed modesty. “I’ve always found this fascinating, in discussions about sex, consent and abuse, the people who don’t understand the nuance of it. Therefore if this is abuse, why isn’t that abuse?” She mentions the comparison of certain comments to lyrics in popular music. “They said: ‘Well, how’s that dissimilar?’ I thought: ‘How is it alike?’”

She would not have come to London in 2008 had it not been for her romantic interest. “Everyone said: ‘Don’t go to London, they have rats there.’ And I hated it, because I was immediately poor.”

‘I knew I had comedy’

She got a job in retail, was found to have a chronic illness, which can sometimes make it hard to get pregnant, and at 23, decided to try to have a baby. “When you’re first diagnosed something – I was quite sick at the time – you go to the most negative outcome. My logic with my boyfriend was, we’ve had so many problems, if we haven’t split up by now, we never will. Now I see how lengthy life is, and how many things can transform. But at 23, I couldn’t see it.” She was able to get pregnant and had Violet.

The next bit sounds as high-pressure as a chaotic comedy film. While on parental leave, she would look after Violet in the day and try to break into comedy in the evening, bringing her daughter with her. She felt from her sales job that she had no problem persuading others, and she had belief in her sharp humor from her time at Hooters; more than that, she says bluntly, “I was confident I had jokes.” The whole scene was shot through with discrimination – she won a major comedy award in 2008, just over a year after she’d started performing, a prize that was established in the context of a persistent debate about whether women could be funny